A “naturalistic” economics must incorporate our evident behavioral heterogeneity—and address the empirically observable emotions that novelists know drive our actions (including both the logic of “self-regarding” motives, like greed, and of “other-regarding” ones, like sympathy). No realistic account of human behavior can exclude different character types and multiple motives. “Utility,” supposedly what we all seek at all times to maximize, is a vast oversimplification of our goals. Jerome Kagan says, we want money, status, power, or other goods, for “the feelings that achieving those goals permits.” Reducing what Lord Shaftesbury called the “thousand other springs” of human motivation to “utility” seems a flagrant fictionalization. And as Tom Sedlacek notes, utility has the taint of tautology. It easily becomes a self-fulfilling assumption. Whatever we do, was done to maximize it. - blogs.scientificamerican.com